EDI Engine™ \ VICS Bill Of Lading

As part of its software solution, 123 EDI has incorporated the VICS Bill of Lading, an industry standard, providing the ability of capturing and printing this standard form; it also has the capability of including supplemental pages that are closely linked to the generation of advance ship notices.

Overview

Today, neither the form nor the usage of the Bill of Lading is really standard. The differences in Bill of Lading formats can lead to errors in recording shipment data and limit productivity. It also makes the task of extracting data for billing and freight settlement purposes quite difficult, particularly for carriers and consignees who may process thousands of Bills of Lading on a daily basis. As the document passes through hands and through companies, the data items required at each step of the process must be located and identified, resulting in a time-consuming work effort.

The traditional use of the Bill of Lading was to establish a contract for carriage and to also serve as a receipt of goods. Over the last several years, the Bill of Lading has become a primary source of information within the supply chain and has now taken on a much greater importance as it is used for scheduling and recording shipments as well as input to carrier EDI transactions. Many shippers have modified the form to fit the requirements of the carrier and consignee for scheduling and unloading the shipment.

The standard Bill of Lading document and guidelines address this problem so that processing time can be reduced and greater accuracy can be achieved through the use of a standardized Bill of Lading. As shippers and carriers become familiar with the standardized form, individuals will be able to more easily document and extract information from it.

Benefits of the Standard Form

Use of this standard Bill of Lading will result in:

• An established uniform format for accurate shipment documentation across the supply chain.
• Ease of tracking shipment information with the use of the standard Bill of Lading number.
• Bar coding critical data in the Bill of Lading form for ease of capturing essential data.
• Reduced driver and office administrator time that was formerly used to process the information from Bills of Lading.
• Potential cost reduction through the elimination of redundant forms and need for administrative services.

Contact 123 EDI for further information and technical specifications. Also, access VICS website at http://www.vics.org/guidelines/bol/